


hold on sea, won't you wait for me

by heybernia



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: 20MERTEEN, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Dreamsharing, M/M, Soulmates, primer included within
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-07 23:17:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17375060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heybernia/pseuds/heybernia
Summary: No one ever told Phil that you could dream of a being that's of the land and not of the sea.





	hold on sea, won't you wait for me

**Author's Note:**

> if you want to read a primer for this pairing, feel free to read this [lovely primer](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/12tf0jf9ELjAVHXrq2j1u2CoA-9gxXD_tahl7YueGuVA/edit?usp=sharing) made by me, ash (love_stella) and aimee (aimerai) and if you want to read a canon compliant fic, then you should read ash's great [ace!nic fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17307092)
> 
> title from the song hold on sea by michael timmons
> 
> thank you aimee, ellie and ash for their comments ily all <3

He’s on land and he can breathe.

He can’t remember how he got here. Up high, the sun hangs, looks down on him and his skin, sends down streams of unrelenting heat.

His mouth is dry, because that’s what he’s breathing through, and his lips are drying out too, parched and shrivelled.

In front of him, where he’s been facing the whole time, the ocean stretches away from him, the tide inching away every time it comes in.

Slow blinks to try and clean the dust out of his eyes. He ends up having to rub them away with both hands. Grains of sands sticking to his lashes, catching on the scales, trapped under the nails on his fingers. It’s all rough and digging into him.

He still can’t remember how he got here. He can’t remember what came before it. He can distantly remember being told to never go near land, to never rise up close to the surface, to never follow the wake of the machines or risk becoming lost in the dark.

There’s someone watching him right on the edge of the corner of his eye. He turns to them, and they’re sitting on the sand, legs outstretched, leaning back on their hands. They were already looking at him.

“Hey.” It’s a man, probably. He’s sure it’s a man like he’s a man, technically.

“Hey,” he echoes. It’s easy to speak, surprisingly, the word falls out of his mouth despite how odd it is to move it.

The man blinks at him. There’s no change in expression on his face, it stays neutral. There must be a breeze beside him because his hair is moving around his face. It’s a sort of gold colour that catches and reflects the sunlight, matches the bright chain around his neck.

“Where did you come from?” Again, the words just fall out of his mouth straight from his head. There’re no footprints anywhere on the sand. No sign of any other kind of life here.

“I’ve been here the whole time,” the man says. “I’m pretty sure I have, anyway.”

That doesn’t answer the question. “How did I get here?”

The man’s eyebrows pull together; pull his entire face into a frown. “You’ve always been here too.” Like the wind that has made its way over to him, the man’s voice brushes past him. If he closed his eyes, it could almost be a quiet song like the ones he fell asleep to when he was young.

“Are you okay?” The man asks, eyebrows still furrowed.

“Yes.”

“You don’t look like you should be here,” the man says.

He’s right. His body should be yearning for the water. Instead, it seems content to crack under the sun and he’s content too, for some odd reason. He can hear the waves but they’re not calling him, the man is instead.

There are drops of water on the man’s skin, dripping down from the soaking wet ends of his hair that have turned the golden curls dark. The sky is clear blue but it seems to be trembling somewhat. Shaking where it frames the man.

‘I’ve never been to the ocean. I’ve only ever been to lakes,” the man says, hair ends still dripping, the droplets running down his arms.

“Lakes are fresh and clear, they’re nothing like the salt of the sea,” he says. The buzz of thunderstorms surrounds them. It’s different than what he’s used to, closer than he’s ever experienced it before. There’s no sign of clouds in the still shaking sky, nothing reflected in the enclosing tide.

It’s hard to tell but the corner of the man’s mouth seems to turn up. “Man of the sea, huh.” His mouth is definitely lifting up into a smile. Returning it isn’t a choice. He doesn’t seem notice his feet are almost about to get wet.

“Yes,” he says. The buzz is getting louder, nearing on deafening, the static building inside, but there’s no need to raise his voice because he knows that the man would always be able to hear him. No matter where they were, he would be heard. 

Somewhere inside him, there’s the urge to move towards to the man, to touch the water clinging to him and the corner of his mouth. It’s the last thing he thinks before the sky comes crashing down and the waves rushes all the way in, grabs him tight and pulls him back down.

*

When Phil opens his eyes, the first thing he feels is the water surrounding him. He stays there for a few minutes, letting the water pass through him, breathing the way he’s supposed to.

He turns around in a small circle. Makes sure to stretch out his arms and his shoulders and all the way down to his tail. Flicks out the end before he closes his eyes and tries to find some peaceful sleep, listening to the faraway sounds of the sea swaying gently.

He finds none. No one ever told him that you could dream of a being that's of the land and not of the sea.

*

The next night, Phil dreams he’s on the beach again. It takes him too long to recognise he’s here considering how this is the only place he’s ever dreamed of, but it’s the same, same clear blue sky and shrinking tide and the same man with the blank face and golden hair who is staring at him.

“Hey, it’s you again,” the man says which answers any questions about if he recognises Phil and if he’s truly the same man as he was yesterday.

“Hey,” Phil echoes again. The wind is whistling a tune in the background, something light and with a clear tune.

“Do you remember how you got here this time?” The man asks. His skin and hair are dry again just like the inside of Phil’s mouth.

“No,” Phil says, resisting the urge to pull his tail in closer and wrap it around him.

The man pulls his legs in, crosses them and crosses his arms too. His chain is swaying, lifting a little, and Phil wants to hold it and pull it tight. A part of him wants to drag the man down to the depths where Phil lives. “Well, you’ve still been here the whole time to me.”

Phil sighs. “I believe you.” Behind the man, there’s a group of three trees waving from side to side at him in time. He doesn’t know how he knows they’re trees but he does.

The man says, “I’m Nic, by the way. Do you have a name?”

“Yeah, it’s Phil,” Phil says, looking down on his shimmering scales.

Nic’s face does this weird thing, his mouth contorts into something crooked. It’s not as blank as it first appears, expressions hiding in every wrinkle. “Phil,” the man-- Nic repeats.

“Yeah, that’s my name,” Phil says, his tail shifting closer to his own body, acting as a barricade between him and Nic.

“You’re Phil the mermaid?” Nic checks another time.

“Yeah, is there something wrong with that?” Phil asks. Nic seems to think over his answer, takes the chance to stare at Phil and Phil isn’t sure what colour he’d say Nic’s eyes were, green perhaps, but they’re looking directly at Phil and Phil feels his skin start to turn hot, despite how hard the trees were waving, despite the constant breeze.

“No, I guess Phil wasn’t the kind of name I was expecting,” Nic says. “It suits you though.” He’s doing that smile again, the one that makes everything freeze including the sky and the trees.

On his cheeks, the heat is unbearable. “I’ve never met anyone with the name Nic before,” Phil mentions.

“Well, I hope I’m not ruining the name for any future Nics you might meet,” Nic says.

“You’re not,” Phil says. Definitely not.

Phil doesn’t say anything else before this dream ends, quickly and without fanfare, which is for the best because the only things that were trying to push their way out of his mouth was that Nic is the sweetest name he’s ever heard, and no one else is ever going to compare.

*

It takes his mother a while to ask Phil about if he’s had any dreams. She’s probably expecting Phil to tell her of his own accord.

Phil shrugs off her hand on his shoulder and her concerned gaze. “No, there’s been nothing yet.”

She smiles at him. Brushes his cheek with her hand like she has always done. “Give it time. They will appear one day no matter how long it takes.”

Phil closes his eyes in case they would shine with the lie. “I know.”

His mother’s voice doesn’t appear in his head again before she swims away gracefully.

Phil wonders whether Nic can see his eyes shining, what they look like to him in the light. Then he stops thinking about that, and takes off to a place where he can be alone.

*

“I’ve never had a reoccurring dream like this before,” Nic says. “I used to have one about being inside a video game inside an old arcade machine that took place in my school, it was being attacked by killer walking robots.”

Nic turns to look at Phil then, profile of his face illuminated by the sun and surrounding orange sky around it, and Phil’s face must say it all about how confused he is because Nic does this thing that Phil knows is laughter. Bubbles float out of Nic’s mouth like how it is when Phil sees people laugh underwater but it’s more now out of it, because Phil can hear it ring like a whole new kind of song.

“How many words did you understand out of that?” Nic asks, the question marked by the pop of the bubble.

“School.” Phil says. “I got school but I don’t think it had anything to do with fish, did it?”

“No, but I appreciate you trying all the same,” Nic says. “Wait, is something up?”

Feeling exposed is understandable when your face is painting all of your feelings this obviously that Phil can’t hide anything. “That dream. It didn’t sound like it made any sense to me,” Phil says eventually.

Nic blinks at him a few times. “Well, it didn’t. They don’t. It’s just a dream, right. Dreams don’t have to make sense. Like, look at yourself man, you’re a mermaid. A merman. Is it merman or is it mermaid? Or both?”

“You call us mermaids,” Phil says to cover the sound of his ribs tightening, squeezing his lungs.

“Fine then, mermaids it is,” Nic says, and then he carries on, quieter, like he’s mostly talking to himself. “I don’t know what I expected you to say, you’re just a dream man. A dream boat but still just a dream.”

Just a dream. All Phil will ever be is a dream. It’s not a surprise.

*

Other people around his age in the pod start asking him about it all. Phil knows they don’t mean anything hurtful by it, they’re all just nosey and in most cases, they just want an excuse to speak about their own soulmates. Phil hardly feels bad about lying to them, Phil hasn’t seen any other creature with half a tail and half a torso in his dreams, no.

Phil wishes he could speak about Nic because there’s so much Phil could sing about, the golden strands of hair on Nic’s hair and the intricate links of his chain that Phil tries to count like his eyelashes that catch the light.

Occasionally, Phil will sing to himself about the man in his dreams, a quiet, lonely song, a song filled with longing only he can hear and that may always stay that way.

*

This dream is realer than the last. It’s realer than all of the ones that came before it. Phil wonders what that means. Well, he knows what he means, that Nic is somewhere closer to him than he’s ever been before. But he doesn’t know how or why.

“This is somewhere different,” Nic says, pointing out the obvious. This is no beach surrounded only be the ocean, instead, they’re in a cave filled with black rocks with uneven surfaces and these silvery looking cracks, barely lit from the permanently setting sun.

“Yeah, it is. More comfortable than the sand at least,” Phil says.

“I think that’s up to debate,” Nic says.

Phil’s been here before. It took him a while to realise, it was a long time ago, when he was young and could fit into the pool easily where the fin of his tail is currently skimming the surface in the pool.

Phil asks, “Where are you now?”

“In Moncton to play their hockey team,” Nic says. “Their team's called the Wildcats.”

That’s what Nic does. He plays hockey which he’s tried to explain on multiple occasions but Phil is still trying to grasped his head around the idea of ice so they never get that far. There’s something about skating which is moving across the surface of the ice and shooting things into a net that’s the part Phil understands the most because it reminds of a game he used to play when he was young.

“Chucking objects into nets is a thing that all creatures can get behind,” Nic had said.

Every time Nic brings up hockey, Phil does his best to pay attention and to listen intently because Nic cares so much about it. He’ll tell Phil about the shots they made and the goals they scored and the saves that were made.

Some nights he doesn’t bring up hockey at all, will sit with a deep-seated frown on his face instead while dark clouds block out the light, and Phil has figured out by now that’s because of hockey too. It’s what happens when it doesn’t go well.

Hockey makes Nic happier than anything else, except his family, and hockey guts Nic out like nothing else.

All Phil can do is try his best to make Nic happy too. To make sure Nic doesn’t wake up with the same expression he went to sleep with.

“Phil, Phil. Earth to attractive mermaid.” Nic is speaking loud enough that it’s echoing in the cave.

“I’m here, I’m on Earth too,” Phil says.

“Good, I was worried you were going to fall into the water and leave me,” Nic says.

“No, that’s never going to happen.” _I will never leave you_ , Phil thinks, the voice in his head barely audible.

“That’s good,” Nic says again. “I can’t stand going to the beach by myself. It’s always better with other people.”

*

Nic deserves to know what the dreams mean for them. Phil could tell him about all of the stories he heard growing up about how when mermaids were finally old enough, they’d start to spend every night with the one who will end up being their partner for life. How it was impossible to explain that feeling when their tail first intertwined with yours.

Phil doesn’t need Nic to love him back. Phil loves him from below the surface and that will have to be enough for now, possibly forever.

*

“It’s weird,” Nic says in one dream. Every night, he gets closer and closer to Phil, and every time Phil notices it, and yet it doesn’t do anything to pull himself further away. If Phil wanted to, he could drape his tail on top of Nic’s legs from where Nic is laying down next to him instead of lying flat on his back and trying to stop sand from getting caught under his scales.

“I never dream about you during naps, only ever at night.”

Phil lets his face frown. “What’s a nap?”

Nic turns his head so he’s facing Phil. “You don’t have naps in mermaid land? You guys are all missing out, naps are one of the finest things known to man on land.”

“I still don’t know what they are,” Phil says. “All I know is you love them.”

“It’s when you sleep during the day,” Nic says.

“You need more sleep?” Phil asks. 

“Sometimes, yeah. Sometimes you just need a little boost to get you through the day,” Nic says. He smiles then and Phil’s still not over how different it is from what must be Nic’s normal expression, how the seriousness melts away to reveal something that makes Phil’s throat catch. Phil doesn’t need it to breathe thank fully not that Phil needs to breathe at all. He has to remind himself of that. “It also means you have energy at night for the important things.”

“Like what?” The words must come from Phil but it doesn’t feel like he said them, voice still trapped in his throat.

“Like spending time with the mermaid you’re going steady with,” Nic says.

Phil doesn’t know what to say to that. What he can that won’t lead to him spitting out parts of the funny feeling in his chest. Luckily, Nic keeps on talking so Phil doesn’t have to.

“Honestly these are my favourite kind of wet dreams.” Before Nic is even finished saying it, he’s started laughing and making deep wrinkles surround his eyes.

Phil doesn’t get what’s funny about it. He still ends up laughing beside Nic anyway, because it’s impossible to escape the feeling in his chest, the sudden burst when Nic leans far enough over to lean his head against Phil’s arm.

It’s still there when he lies awake, the phantom sensation of Nic’s hair brushing his skin as Nic asks him about what Phil’s been doing, about what he sees in the water.

*

Phil wants to stop lying to everyone. It’s exhausting, and it hurts hearing them all talk about the people in their dreams and having to swallow down anything about Nic, but it’s easier to hide the truth. He can’t ever be with who he’s meant to be destined with so why should anyone know.

During the day, Phil’s meant to be alone, but at night, every night when the moon is awake, he’ll get to spend them all with Nic and Phil will take that. Having Nic to himself and being close enough to breath him in if Phil wanted to.

*

Phil is used to things happening in the dreams that he doesn’t really understand.

This might actually be the most confusing thing of all. Nic is here in the dream but he’s holding something that has liquid in it. He doesn’t have any clothes covering his torso and he has one pair of black glasses covering his eyes and another on his head. His chain sits nicely in his collarbone, glistening like treasure from sunken ships, and Phil has to tear his eyes away.

“Phil, guess what, it’s my birthday,” Nic says, slurring the words together. “Well, it was my birthday yesterday, but I’m only seeing you now so yeah, my birthday. You should wish me happy birthday.”

“Happy birthday,” Phil says, smile coming easy. He’s pretty sure he knows what a birthday is, and even if he’s wrong, Nic deserves to be happy and deserves to hear so Phil will say it.

Normally, Nic’s smiles are contained somewhat, like he can’t help holding something back, but there’s none of that now. Nic’s smile, it’s like, Phil doesn’t know because it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen and the only thing it’s making Phil think of is Nic, Nic, Nic.

Compared to a usual night, Nic seems even looser, like he’s barely holding himself up right. They’re sitting right next to each other on the sand that’s cushioning them. Phil’s tail stretches out further than Nic’s legs, and Phil looks at everywhere they are touching while Nic continues to lean into him more. Phil is doing all he can to support his weight. He never realised until now just how solid Nic is.

“Did you have a nice birthday?” Phil asks. Nic’s eyes are half-lidded, his breaths shallow. Phil can’t say he minds Nic falling asleep on him. The thought is enough to make him feel content.

Nic nods slowly, shuffles to try and make himself more comfortable. He’s warm, breath hot, pulse slowing down. “Yeah,” he says. “It’s ending nicely.”

Phil closes his eyes and lets himself indulge in this, lets himself push Nic’s hair off his face while he stares into the setting sun.

*

Phil’s by himself. He has his parents right now and the pod but he will be by himself one day. Mermaids have one child and that child has one partner and they have one life to share together.

Nic has a family. His mother and his father aren’t together anymore, they have new partners now. Nic has a sister who shares his blood and another that doesn’t and he has cousins he speaks of fondly and friends who he brings up every so often and more people than Phil can keep track. Than Phil will ever know.

All Phil is going to have in the world is Nic. It was easier than Phil thought it would be to accept that Nic is always going to have more important things than him.

*

Phil isn’t on the beach. He’s not in the cave and he’s nowhere near the ocean, he can’t hear it anywhere. The only thing he can hear in the dark are these weird gulping sounds, nothing like the birds he hears when he surfaces.

“Nic,” Phil says quietly. Nic has to be here. He has to be here somewhere. Soft material lays under his fingers, his whole-body tense with anticipation, tail hanging off and laying on the floor.

A sudden shift under the material makes Phil jump. Phil blinks a few times, lets his eyes adjust until they can make out a shape next to the wall. Phil knows it’s Nic. He just knows. 

“We lost,” Nic whispers. Phil swallows, throat and mouth dry. He’s right there beside Phil, half under the sheet covering him, not sitting up, more slumped over. “We lost, we got so fucking close to the Mem and we lost.”

He’s trying not to cry again. He’s already been crying for a long time, Phil realises. The upset, the pain is rolling off Nic constantly, endless. Phil’s chest hurts.

Misty rain starts to fall despite how there’s no sky to be seen, but Phil still can’t hear anything apart from his heartbeat and Nic’s deep breathes. Before Phil knows what he’s doing, he’s reaching for Nic and pulling him close to him, shielding him from the elements.

Nic wraps his arms tight around Phil without hesitation, buries his face into the crook of Phil’s neck. It’s not important how well Nic fits here inside Phil’s arms, how his tail is trying to lift up so it can wrap around Nic too, and how Phil wants to keep him here forever where Phil can protect him.

“Sometimes,” Nic whispers. “Sometimes I wish you were real so fucking badly.”

Everywhere inside Phil is burning. His eyes are dry and burning, he needs to say it now, needs Nic to know that Phil is real and if Phil got to choose from anyone and anything on the land and sea combined, he’d still choose to spend every night with Nic every single time.

“Nic, Nic,” Phil whispers as softly as he can. “Do you remember the cave we were in?”

Nic nods and keeps his face hidden.

Phil strokes down between Nic’s shoulder blades, tries to bring out the tension. “Do you remember where you were when you dreamed of it?”

“Moncton,” Nic says.

“Go there, you’ll be able to find it. Just trust yourself,” Phil says because he’s known since the first time, since they dreamt they were inside cave, that’s where they would meet, and Phil’s not going to delay any longer.

“Phil,” Nic says. Hearing his name come out of Nic’s mouth makes something inside Phil sing in reply every time.

“Phil, why?” Nic asks.

“Just go there, please,” Phil says into the side of Nic’s head. He presses his lips unthinkingly and he thinks Nic hears. “Trust me.”

Nic buries his face in Phil’s shoulder and Phil feels his answer more than he hears it _. Okay, okay, I trust you._

*

Phil’s arms feel empty once he wakes up.

*

He tells his mother where he’s going because there’s no chance he’ll be able to hide his emotions when he makes it back from the cave. The chances of coming back with a happy heart are slim but Phil is willing to take anything.

“It’s dangerous,” is all she says.

“I know but I have to go,” Phil says in reply. “It’s not for me, it’s for my soulmate. He needs me.”

His mother doesn’t say anything else. She lets him go and barely follows after him with a song, barely enough to give him her blessing.

He doesn’t reach the cave until the sun has reached its highest point in the sky. Fitting through the rocks is much harder now than it was when he was young but he manages it eventually without any real damage.

It’s the right place, there’s only one cave that looks like this Phil can remember. He can’t remember exactly what brought him here before, playing, chasing something, fate already working away.

Phil leans his head and arms on a rock jutting out. He stays in the water as he waits and waits.

He waits in the shade of the cave as the sun moves from one side of the sky to the other, clouds float across the sky.

Thinking that Nic would be here today was too much. Phil wanted Nic to be here with everything he had, but that’s not enough.

The sun will disappear soon and Phil will be here until it does. Then he’ll come back tomorrow and the day after and the day after until Nic appears.

“Phil.” Never before has Phil’s name sounded more melodic, more like a beautiful song.

Phil turns sharply towards the sound of voice above him, standing on the rocks on the other side of the pool while Phil keeps himself afloat with his tail.

“Phil,” Nic’s voice repeats. He looks a little leaner than he does in the dreams but Phil would take this Nic over any Nic in his dreams without questioning, because this Nic is real. If Phil gave into his urges, he’d be able to touch Nic and pull him into Phil.

“It’s you,” Nic states. Every statement involves him taking in another breath. “You’re real. You’re actually real. What the fuck.”

Out of reflex, Phil opens his mouth and a few words falls out. “Hi, Nic.”

“You’re--” Nic has never had problems speaking before but now his tongue is getting caught on something. “Shit, you’re even more beautiful in real life, how,” Nic says, bending his knees, and Phil’s mouth now stays hanging open.

“You think I’m?” Phil asks not even managing to get the word out.

“For real, Phil. Have you seen yourself?” Nic says. He’s on his knees and hands on the edge leaning over and Phil is sure that can’t be comfortable. “I don’t care if it’s mermaid siren magic, you can eat me and skin me alive if you want to.”

“I don’t want to eat you,” Phil says. “Or skin you.”

“Oh, that’s cool,” Nic says, but Phil hardly hears over the sound of his eardrums thundering away.

“Are you alright? You look like you’re trying to bite your lip off,” Nic points out. He’s only an arm’s length away now.

Phil realises his lip to say, “I want to be with you.”

Nic blinks. “In what way?”

Phil doesn’t know how to explain it and he doesn’t want to start off by saying that Phil wants to spend the rest of his life with Nic, that they’re destined to be together, because that feels like it would be too much, too quickly. So instead, Phil says, “I love you.”

Nic blinks again. Then he stands up, and takes his shirt off and starts to work on his shoes.

“What are you doing?” Phil asks.

“Taking a dip,” Nic says, tucking his glasses into one of his shoes before lowering himself down over the edge of the rocks and into the pool itself.

Phil is right there to catch him, lets his hands guide themselves to his sides to make sure Nic stays afloat. They’re close enough that their chests are almost touching, that Phil’s tail brushes past Nic’s feet as it moves in the water.

“Can I kiss you?” Nic asks, moving his hands onto Phil’s shoulder.

Phil nods, small enough that he can stay focused on the slope of Nic’s nose, twinkling in the corner of his eyes, eager to find out exactly what it’s like.

In one quick movement, Nic leans up, using his hands as supports to press his mouth to Phil’s. It’s short, it’s sweet and Phil would like to try more of it.

They break apart and Nic has this lovely red across his nose and cheekbones now. “I wanted to kiss you after like a week,” Nic says into Phil’s mouth. “I’m pretty sure I’ve been in love with you since before the first month was over.”

Phil doesn’t notice when the sun sets. Too many lights shining behind his eyes for him to do so.

*

That night is the first where they don’t speak to each other. They’re too busy moving each other’s mouths against the other to let words out.

Eventually, Nic breaks the comfortable silence. “You like the chain?” Nic glances down to where Phil’s hand is tracing across the delicate links.

“I like it on you,” Phil says.

Nic’s face steadily starts to turn red. Phil puts his fingers on Nic’s cheek to see if they’re as warm as they look which they turn out to be. Phil can’t wait until he sees Nic in person and gets to feel his heat again.

“Thanks for that,” Nic says, still blushing. “I think it would look it better on you though.”

“No, you should keep it,” Phil says.

“I want you to have it as a gift,” Nic says, changing tactics. “Something to remind you of me and so everyone knows you have someone.”

So Nic can be very persuasive and thoughtful it turns out.

“I’ll give it to you tomorrow,” Nic promises.

Phil says, “Yes, tomorrow. I can’t wait.”

*

Phil’s on land and he can’t breathe. Whenever he’s around Nic, it’s difficult to do it. Whether Phil is in the water or on land, whether it’s real life or it’s in the dreams they share, Phil lets Nic take it all while they’re pressing their mouths together.

Nic’s thumbs settle hooked into the chain around Phil’s neck. “Looks better on you than it ever did on me,” Nic says.

“I don’t agree with that,” Phil says.

Nic smiles, presses a light kiss to the corner of Phil’s mouth. “Let’s agree to disagree,” he says.

“Okay,” Phil says, more focused on trying to become one with Nic again. Phil will never be able to spend the whole of his life with Nic, but each and every moment is worth it.

Phil wraps his tail around Nic’s leg, lets it curl around Nic’s ankle and stays there holding him close while the sun and the moon take turns looking down on them, the sea taking care not to interrupt.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you lots for reading i hope you enjoyed it <3 
> 
> is nic going to montcon the day after losing the memorial cup semi final in guelph unrealistic? probably yes but so is half fish half human creatures existing so. nic's pov in this would essentially be him coming to terms with the fact he wants to fuck a mermaid btw.
> 
> i'm on twitter [@attababehisch](https://twitter.com/attababehisch)


End file.
